Mauprat eBook

“I trust you will do all you can to spare the
venerable M. Hubert the necessity of facing such a
hideous danger.”

“I will spare him this and many others by taking
upon myself to avenge my cousin. In truth, this
is my right, Monsieur l’Abbe. I know the
duties of a gentleman quite as well as if I had learnt
Latin. You may tell her this from me. Let
her sleep in peace. I will keep silence, and
if that is useless I will fight.”

“But, Bernard,” replied the abbe in a
gentle, insinuating tone, “have you thought
of your cousin’s affection for M. de la Marche?”

“All the more reason that I should fight him,”
I cried, in a fit of anger.

And I turned my back on him abruptly.

The abbe retailed the whole of our conversation to
the penitent. The part that the worthy priest
had to play was very embarrassing. Under the
seal of confession he had been intrusted with a secret
to which in his conversations with me he could make
only indirect allusions, to bring me to understand
that my pertinacity was a crime, and that the only
honourable course was to yield. He hoped too much
of me. Virtue such as this was beyond my power,
and equally beyond my understanding.

X

A few days passed in apparent calm. Edmee said
she was unwell, and rarely quitted her room.
M. de la Marche called nearly every day, his chateau
being only a short distance off. My dislike for
him grew stronger and stronger in spite of all the
politeness he showed me. I understood nothing
whatever of his dabblings in philosophy, and I opposed
all his opinions with the grossest prejudices and expressions
at my command. What consoled me in a measure
for my secret sufferings was to see that he was no
more admitted than myself to Edmee’s rooms.

For a week the sole event of note was that Patience
took up his abode in a hut near the chateau.
Ever since the Abbe Aubert had found a refuge from
ecclesiastical persecution under the chevalier’s
roof, he had no longer been obliged to arrange secret
meetings with the hermit. He had, therefore,
strongly urged him to give up his dwelling in the forest
and to come nearer to himself. Patience had needed
a great deal of persuasion. Long years of solitude
had so attached him to his Gazeau Tower that he hesitated
to desert it for the society of his friend. Besides,
he declared that the abbe would assuredly be corrupted
with commerce with the great; that soon, unknown to
himself, he would come under the influence of the
old ideas, and that his zeal for the sacred cause
would grow cold. It is true that Edmee had won
Patience’s heart, and that, in offering him
a little cottage belonging to her father situated
in a picturesque ravine near the park gate, she had
gone to work with such grace and delicacy that not
even his techy pride could feel wounded. In fact,
it was to conclude these important negotiations that
the abbe had betaken himself to Gazeau Tower with Marcasse